‘I was frozen’: Cosby accuser says she was drugged, groped

MARYCLAIRE DALE

AP PHOTO
Andrea Constand walks to the courtroom during Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., Tuesday. Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby’s chief accuser took the stand at his sexual assault trial Tuesday to tell her story publicly for the first time, saying the comedian violated her after giving her three blue pills that left her paralyzed and helpless.

“In my head, I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen,” Andrea Constand, a 44-year-old former employee of the basketball program at Temple University, said in their long-awaited courtroom confrontation. “I wasn’t able to fight in any way.”

She added: “I wanted it to stop.”

Cosby, 79, is charged with drugging and sexually abusing Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. The TV star once dubbed America’s Dad could get 10 years in prison if convicted.

His lawyers tried to poke holes in Constand’s story, citing differences between her courtroom testimony and the accounts she gave to police and in a lawsuit in 2005. The defense has argued the two had a romantic relationship, that Constand wasn’t incapacitated and that the sexual encounter was consensual.

Constand, an athletic 6-footer with dark curly hair, was calm and collected as she testified, looking at the jury as she began describing the assault.

She said Cosby gave her pills he claimed were a natural remedy to ease her stress about a looming career change. “They’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off,” she quoted him as saying.

She told the jury she started feeling woozy after about 20 minutes, with blurred vision, slurred words and legs that felt like rubber. Cosby then penetrated her with his hand and also placed her hand on his penis and moved it back and forth, she said.

Cosby, sitting across the room at the defense table, leaned in to listen, whispered to his lawyer and, at times, shook his head.

Before Tuesday, Constand had never spoken about Cosby in public, barred from doing so under the terms of a confidential settlement they reached in 2006. Her deposition from that lawsuit remains sealed.